acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

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408 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
In the way of history or old buildings Aintab can
otier little. The castle and aqueduct, and the site
of the ancient shrine at Doliche, a few miles outside
the town, are all that remain from earlier days,
and are of no particular interest.
But there is one building with a very singular history.
It was erected a good many years ago by an
Armenian who had obtained Anglican ordination and
secured money in England to build a church at
Aintab. A long story pertains to this church and
the efforts of its native priest, the substance of
which is that the Armenian had made converts and
gathered an Anglican communion around him, which
latterly fell away. When I saw the building it was
locked, and was said to have been closed for several
years. Above one of the doors is a representation
of the Royal Arms, so far-fetched in execution as
to be recognisable by no one unless first told of
its purport. Disputes and litigation have gathered
round this derelict church property, for some interested
folk wish to sell it, and others to buy, and
yet others maintain that whatever may be desirable
it cannot be alienated at all. And the story went,
too, that the building might yet fall to the Ottoman
State, and provide an instance of an Anglican church
being converted into a mosque.
The bazaars of Aintab reflect the nature of the
surrounding country more closely than I remember
to have noticed elsewhere. The town is in a district
which grows much wheat, and in the wheat bazaar
the grain is spread in great mounds like heaps of
yellow sand, among which stand donkeys, and camels
kneel or stalk slowly, and buyers and sellers dressed
in strange garments go with clamorous voices. In
another bazaar you may see pistachio nuts in bulk
—another product of this district, the nut most
highly esteemed throughout the Turkish Empire.
From Aintab to Aleppo, a distance of nearl)'' a
hundred miles, runs the finest road in Asia Minor
metalled, well-rolled, and so jjerfect in surface that it